How Can SEO Professionals And Graphic Designers Work Effectively Together?

Posted by Liz Seyi on November 9th, 2022

It might seem odd in some ways for us to suggest that much friction would necessarily arise between a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert and a graphic designer over the course of a website overhaul they are both working on. After all, they are surely working towards a shared goal of creating a more impactful and successful online presence for their client, and both SEO and graphic design will play crucial roles in the effectiveness of your own brand’s digital marketing online.

Alas, these two types of online marketing professional can sometimes clash. What are some of the issues that can occur between them and is there anything you can do as a brand using both SEO and graphic design services to help these marketing practitioners work more fruitfully together?

They need to understand that they are working towards shared goals

Yes, there are respects in which graphic designers and SEO experts can starkly differ with the emphases they place on certain aspects of the ‘face’ a brand presents to the online world.

Graphic designers, for example, are frequently concerned with achieving a sense of harmony with the visuals they rustle up. This will often include a wish to leave plentiful white space in a given design, which might be the subject of disagreement with an SEO professional, if the latter regards such space as an unrealised opportunity to incorporate some optimised content.

But on the other hand, the best SEO experts and graphic designers have the ability to see the ‘big picture’, including a shared need to make sure the client’s website or other interface is an attractive one for the viewer (read: prospective customer). So, they should be constantly communicating with each other to help ensure this.

They need to realise that not everything needs to be ‘above the fold’

One thing that SEO professionals and graphic designers rarely disagree on, is that the most important content on a given webpage should be placed at, or near the top of the page. This is often called “above the fold”, a term that refers to the part of a webpage that is visible within a browser window without the user needing to scroll down.

After all, when a human being lands on a given page and looks at the content, they need to be given an immediate sense of what the page is about, and information on how the website will help them relieve or resolve whatever concern or problem they have.

Graphic designers and SEO experts need to work together to achieve a design that looks good to this human user, while also catering to the requirement for the site to rank well in the search engines. Thankfully, these priorities do tend to go hand in hand.

They need to strike a balance with the use of copy, too

Continuing on the subject of a given webpage needing to look good, think back to the last time you landed on a webpage that consisted largely of one giant block of text… after another, after another.

Did you stay for long enough on that page to read through the content and get answers to your queries? Or were you overwhelmed or put off enough to simply hit that browser ‘back’ button and look elsewhere? If the latter was the situation for you rather than the former, that’s an understandable reaction.

Yes, it could be perfectly possible to cram content into that space, or this space, on a page. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a wise course of action. The SEO person shouldn’t dictate so much to the graphic designer about exactly where and how text is placed on a page, that it compromises the overall design.

Again, so much of this comes down to communication between the SEO professional and graphic designer. If the content writer can produce content that nicely matches the design template for that page, complete with text being broken up into quotes, bullet points and/or shorter sentences or paragraphs if and where needed, this can greatly help the harmony of the overall effect.

All in all, experts in SEO and graphic design have to work together; there is no room for rampant ego when it comes to formulating the best overall outcomes for a brand’s digital marketing online.

It is a lesson that, here at PENNInk Productions, we strongly heed in the projects we execute for our clients. For more information about how we could help achieve similarly formidable results for your own brand, you are very welcome to contact us.